Maria Coryell-Martin is an expeditionary artist.

That’s right.

Expeditionary, as in expeditions. What type of imagery does this bring up? If you imagine an artist traveling with a scientist or an explorer, you are imagining things correctly.

This episode originally aired in 2019. Back then, Maria took a few moments to speak with me while she was packing for her trip to meet a scientist in Alaska.

In this episode, we discuss Maria’s journey from student to artist, how she has sustained herself as a working artist, and the three questions she answers before taking on new projects.

Plus, I have exciting updates to share. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Maria.

LINKS

• Learn more about Maria’s current project in the post Witnessing Climate Change.
• View the exhibition and other news about Maria's trip to Alaska.
• Expeditionary Art (Maria’s website)
• Maria talks about her work in this presentation for Girls Can Do.
• Maria shares how she introduces nature journaling to kids.
• See the Art Toolkit's new store!
• Follow Maria on Instagram at @expeditionaryart and @arttoolkit.

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

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Wendy Nadherny Fachon is an author, journalist, podcast host and environmental educator. Her work is published by Natural Awakenings Magazine, Sustainable Living News, and Dreamvisions 7 Radio.

After working many years in the healthcare industry, Wendy left her position to focus on children's health and wellness issues. She developed an afterschool walking program, which gave rise to her radio show, the Story Walking Radio Hour.

How did Wendy develop her afterschool program?

What is her radio show about?

How does she approach partnership building, which has been critical to her success?

Let's find out.

LINKS

Story Walking Radio Hour

Listen to the latest episode

Story Walking Website

Story Walking Radio Hour Facebook group

Nature Drawing Program

The Empowerment Factory's Trash to Treasures Short Video (YouTube)

Contact Wendy

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

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Today, we get to learn from Gloria Desanker, geospatial storyteller, founder, and Principal Consultant at Map Nerd Consulting.

More About Gloria

My name is Gloria Desanker, and I founded Map Nerd Consulting so that I could work as a Geospatial Storyteller to help others unlock the power of location-based insights. My services are designed to uplift community stories, especially communities of color. I offer tailored GIS solutions, visually appealing cartographic design, social media and marketing support, and storytelling guidance so that you can ensure your stories and experiences are authentically portrayed.

As a Black woman in the GIS, forestry, environmental science, and environmental education fields/sectors, I experience firsthand the lack of acknowledgment and representation these fields have of Black and brown successes, accomplishments, and feats. That is why I strive to change the white-dominant narrative of how data should be used, why data should be used, and how to use data and GIS to share an accurate representation of people of color in the U.S.

I take my clients through the full arc of mapping their story: story development, data collection and management, cartography and spatial analysis, graphic design and creation, and communications through Story Maps, infographic and report creation, or social media marketing. Data is only meaningful if a story is attached to it and we at Map Nerd Consulting believe there is a story in every map.

This past year, I joined the 2023 Cohort of the NAAEE CEE-Change Fellows where I am partnering with NorthStar of GIS whose mission is to advance intersectional racial justice, equity, and belonging in GIS, geography, and STEM. Together, we are developing GIS curriculum and training materials specifically for and by Black people and the Black African diaspora to change the narrative on how Black people and communities are portrayed in the context of climate change. 

Map Nerd Consulting

View Map Nerd Consulting's Linktree

Schedule a call with Gloria at https://calendly.com/mapnerd

Mercator Projection

How Maps Distort Our Perception of the World

Gloria’s Community Action Project with NAAEE CEE-Change Fellowship

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

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In this episode, we get to learn from Dr. Tom Rhoads, an economist and professor at Towson University.

Dr. Rhoads shares his transition from sports economics to environmental economics and his research integrating economics into environmental education.

Dr. Rhoads explains that his interest in environmental education began about five years ago when he noticed a shift in the demographics of his class, with more environmental science and studies majors than economics majors. This led him to change his approach to teaching environmental economics, focusing more on the environment and finding the economics within it.

LINKS

Tom Rhoads, Towson University

Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac*

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring*

The Leopold Writing Program

Working Paper - Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2023 Conference | Thinking like an economist while reading the land: Using reading quizzes to show environmental studies and sciences and economics intersecting in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Working paper

Presentation Slides - North American Association for Environmental Education, 2023 Conference | Costs, Benefits, and Environmental Action; Presentation slides

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

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I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Bill Reynolds, Lars Wohlers, and Mike Mayer, co-founders of Experiential Interpretive Design, a coaching company they founded to help individuals, organizations, and sites develop the interpretive experiences they provide.

In this episode, we learned about the founders, their respective specialties, and why they founded EID.

Today is part 2 of this conversation. In this episode, I sit down with Mike Mayer to discuss his specialty (environmental education) and to learn more about the environmental program that inspires what he, Bill, and Lars do at EID.

We begin this episode by learning more about the Institute for Earth Education. Some of this may sound familiar because I included a short segment in Part 1. Don’t let this distract you because you’ll hear something a bit different before Mike walks us through an example of the type of programming offered by the Institute.

In this conversation, Mike and I also discuss creating holistic experiences in free-choice settings, the AMORE framework developed by Steve Van Matre, interpreting global topics across cultures, and what might change the status quo in environmental education.

LINKS

Experiential Interpretive Design

Institute for Earth Education

Interpretive Design and the Dance of Experience (2009)

Cooper Center for Environmental Learning, College of Education at the University of Arizona

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

Contact Us

In this episode, we meet the co-founders of Experiential Interpretive Design (EID) -- Bill Reynolds, Lars Wohlers, and Mike Mayer. Collectively, they have many years of experience in interpretation and experience design and bring to EID the experience they gained from various roles in tourism, planning, heritage interpretation, environmental education, and coaching. We learn about the founders, why they started EID Coaching, and discuss what is working in the field of interpretation and what is not working. This is the first installment of a two-part episode. 

In Part 2 of this episode, I sit down with Mike Mayer to learn more about the environmental education program that inspires the work he, Bill, and Lars do at EID. 

LINKS

Experiential Interpretive Design

Métis Crossing

Steve Van Matre

John Ververke

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES SHARED BY THE EID TEAM

Lars Wohlers’ bilingual website about digital evaluation (Visitor Studies)

Expecting Company? Preparing your site for Ag-Tourism! (youtube.com)

Sharing Great Ways to Greet the Guests (Part 1)

Sharing Great Ways to Greet the Guests (Part 2)

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

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Janice Kelley is the founder and program director for Nature Detectives, where children in kindergarten through third grade discover the mysteries of the outdoor world on their school campus, at home, at a park, and in their neighborhood.

She is the author of several publications, and when she was here before, we spoke about her book "Mornings on Fair Oaks Bridge: Watching Wildlife at the Lower American River." Today, we’re talking about a book she wrote for parents, grandparents, and family friends called "Nature Detectives at Home."

LINKS

Nature Detectives website

Nature Detectives at Home

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TALATERRA Community Calendar - Learn more about the calendar and how to add your events here.

________________________

Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

Contact Us

Roots of Success (RoS) is an empowering environmental literacy and job training program that prepares youth and adults with significant barriers to employment to access jobs and career pathways in environmental fields and to improve environmental and social conditions in their communities. The program is centered around a federally registered Department of Labor Apprenticeship and Pre-Apprenticeship program and 10-module course. We prepare individuals for 70 jobs and 111 career pathways  in environmental and STEM fields.

Roots of Success is offered in job training programs, reentry programs, prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, high schools, youth programs, adult schools and other workforce and education settings throughout the United States. Since 2009, the program has been offered in over 600 programs in 40 states and over 26,000 youth and adults have gone through the program; more than 12,000 youth and adults took the course while incarcerated. The Roots of Success course is composed of 10 modules: 

1) Fundamentals of Environmental Literacy

2) Water

3) Waste

4) Transportation

5) Energy

6) Building

7) Health, Food & Agriculture

8) Community Organizing & Leadership

9) Financial Literacy & Social Entrepreneurship

10) Application & Practice
 

The program strengthens academic, professional, financial, social entrepreneurship, and advocacy skills. The teaching approach encourages students to use their lived experiences as the foundation upon which to build further knowledge and skills, deepen their understanding of environmental problems and solutions, and access  jobs in environmental fields. 

Graduates earn an “Environmental Specialist” Pre-Apprenticeship credential and are prepared to access 50 jobs and 111 career pathways in the water, waste, transportation, energy, building, food, open space, and environmental advocacy sectors. Detailed information about each of these jobs and career pathways is provided in a two volume Green Jobs and Career Pathways Guidebook that is included in the teaching materials used by instructors who teach the Roots of Success course. 

Roots of Success graduates have a high employment rate, are working in a wide range of fields, and are addressing environmental challenges and injustices through advocacy and policy efforts. A study conducted with community-based program partners that used Roots of Success for at least two years found that among 1,200 graduates 98% felt they were better prepared for job interviews, 75% found employment within 3 months, and 70% remained employed 6 months later.

In prisons, the Roots of Success program is usually taught by incarcerated men and women who are paid full time to teach the course to their peers and can also be taught by staff. Many Roots of Success instructors are serving long and life sentences and working with the Roots of Success program gives these men and women an opportunity to help others. The data we have collected for over a decade shows that participants who go through the Roots of Success course while incarcerated are finding stable, living wage employment opportunities when they return to the community and have very low recidivism rates.
Roots of Success is the leading resource for education and workforce programs across the country that strive to prepare youth and adults with barriers to employment for careers in environmental sectors and empower them to improve conditions in their communities. The program is easy to implement, cost effective, highly impactful, and provides graduates with industry recognized credentials that are highly valued by employers. 

To learn more about the Roots of Success program, go to rootsofsuccess.org or email us at [email protected]

Download a one-page overview

Download a short brochure

Download the 10-year report

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

Contact Us

Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to Jerry Willenbring.

Jerry is a community organizer, teacher, and guide. He is also a physicist and an electrical engineer who has taken on electrifying California.

Literally.

In 2020, Jerry formed Electrify California, a nonprofit committed to providing education and resources to guide the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. When Jerry and I met we talked about why he started Electrify California, who he created it for, and how he engages with the public and supports them as they explore what’s possible while living an electrified life.

LINKS

ElectrifyNow.org

Inflation Reduction Act

Inflation Reduction Act Rebates and Tax Credits (MarketWatch)

CA Climate Action Rebates

Exxon scientists predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy,’ Harvard researchers say.

The Climate Exxon Memo (1982)  (The Carbon Almanac)

Microgrid Community in Menifee, CA

More about heat pumps and property value  (Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland)

The Carbon Almanac

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

Contact Us

Erin Majeske is a mother, wife, dreamer, kitchen experimenter, wannabe gardener, nature explorer, and founder of Barefeet Farm School. When she's not in the outdoor classroom with preschoolers, she loves to enjoy the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her family and make as much music as possible.

In this episode, Erin shares how the need for a summer job led to her opening Barefeet Farm School. She shares her successes, challenges, and what she has learned to improve.

Topics discussed include licensing, consulting, working with parents, and building community partnerships.

LINKS

Barefeet Farm School

Explore starting your own preschool

Instagram (@barefeetfarmschool)

Loving Space School

Washington State is First to License Outdoor Preschools

Natural Start

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

Contact Us

Today we get to learn again from Dr. Brad McLain.

You might remember my conversation with Dr. McLain about identity theory and the professional identities of informal science educators.

In this episode, we pick up the conversation where we left it and talk about Dr. McLain’s new book called Designing Transformative Experiences.

In his book, Dr. McLain leads experience designers through the  methodology he developed through years of working with employees, students, corporations, museums, and nonprofit organizations like Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots.

While you may recognize a transformative experience when you have one, do you know how to create one for the people you serve?

LINKS

Designing Transformative Experiences: A Toolkit for Leaders, Trainers, Teachers, and Other Experience Designers (book)

Designing Transformative Experiences (website)

Ep98: Brad McLain, Identity of Informal Science Educators

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Producer: Tania Marien

Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; 

SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.

View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about Independent environmental education professionals and how they strengthen environmental literacy.

* Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org. Commissions earned support The Freelance Project.

Contact Us